The National Bank of Ukraine is close to canceling the 5 percent tax on income from bank deposits. Recall that this norm was introduced by the Law of Ukraine "On Personal Income Tax," which the Verkhovna Rada adopted in May of last year. The clause on introducing taxation of deposits was to take effect on January 1, 2005. Last week it became known that the National Bank initiated changes to the said law. Obviously, this was prompted by recent events on the currency market and the situation with the outflow of hryvnia deposits from banks. Recently, banks have actively used people's money to lend to the economy. So if taxation of interest on deposits was added to the problems with people's inflationary expectations, it would have been difficult to avoid an even greater outflow of money from banks. However, the amount the government planned to receive from fleecing deposits is small. So the NBU proposed suspending for 2005 the effect of the norm on taxation of deposits, and as compensation for possible budget losses, the country's main bank proposed increasing payments from the NBU by 192 million hryvnias in 2005. Now this norm will be approved by the Verkhovna Rada. There is no doubt about this, say banking market experts.